


In Repair

by regulusrules



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Calling out Good Godfather Sirius Black rights, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Professor Harry Potter, Sad Harry Potter, Veil of Death (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26636176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regulusrules/pseuds/regulusrules
Summary: The Wizarding World has never been left a sizable period without the interruption of war and chaos. Yet, finally, after the countless years of Voldemort's threat, everyone gets a chance to properly heal the traumas that they had endured.But does the Saviour have that same luxury as well?•|∆❝ 𝑰𝒏 𝒘𝒉𝒊𝒄𝒉 𝑯𝒂𝒓𝒓𝒚 𝒓𝒆𝒗𝒊𝒔𝒊𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑽𝒆𝒊𝒍. ❞
Relationships: Sirius Black & Harry Potter
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	In Repair

“I do validate some of the running rumors about me, Shacklebolt, but this of me completely off bonkers hasn’t yet come to fruition.”

“Then what is it with that request, Harry?” asked Kingsley Shacklebolt to The Boy Who Always Lives, his rich voice now laced with curiosity and bafflement.

His companion just smiled.

“I lost something there last time, so might as well search for it now since no one will attack me. Or would there?” Harry Potter asked in jest, arching both eyebrows in what would be a taunting stance if one did not know better about him.

Kingley just sighed, and with boredom etched on his face he looked back to the floating papers that he had been going through. “What did you lose?”

“My absolute favourite head band!” Harry exclaimed, fervently touching the long locks of his dark hair. “Look at the _length_ of it, Kingsley. It has been getting awfully long nowadays that it gets hard to see sometimes. That band used to keep my head in check, and now I keep trying to steal Ginny’s bands but she keeps hexing me. Every single time, Kingsley! You wouldn’t want to face the wrath of that woman, trust me.”

Shacklebolt looked up at him once again. “You’re trolling me.”

Harry just rolled his eyes.

“Of course I am, so might as well just give me the damn permission before I find my own way there— _again_.” Harry voiced, his infamous Do-Not-Cross-The-Boy-Who-Lived pointed tone evident in his words.

Kingsley instantly retorted. “Don’t dare use that tone on me, Potter.”

“Then don’t make me use it,” Harry huffed, but all the while losing the sarcasm infiltrating his words from the beginning. Hesitantly, he said, “I just... _need_ to go there once again, Kingsley. You know I have to.”

And with an edge of finality that the Minister of Magic felt, he leaned. He could not deny such a simple request, no matter how unreasonable it might be. It was not, after all, so frequent to find anyone requesting to enter that ruined place, let alone be it the Saviour of the Wizarding World who took part of its destruction in the first place.

Said Saviour who only shows his face amongst his students nowadays in the familiar grounds of Hogwarts, for even after years of the war having had ceased, the pressure remained the same on The Boy Who Lived. The unwanted fame he had always despised still chased him wherever he went, restricting him from the carefree life he so desperately sought, and leading to drastic consequences on his behalf.

Directly after the war had ended, Harry collectively decided that being a recluse deserved a shot, and contently lived apparating between his newly renovated house in Godric’s Hollow and his second home in the Burrow that contained the closest people to family he had. Did he care that the entirety of the wizarding world was awaiting he take the mantle of all revolutionary movements undertaken to cease all problematic affairs in their post-traumatic society?

Not a single ounce.

Which eventually led to an outbreak itself of everyone attacking the selfishness of the Saviour, accusing him of abandoning them in times of great need, greater than the war itself. Some, however, understood Harry’s need to detach, and even some main figures demanded the world to silence itself around the man who barely got out of it all, subtext wishing to scream that the Saviour literally had no breath in him to fight anymore.

And finally, after weeks of giving a deaf ear to it all, Harry ultimately relented, but his only form of intervention was his attendance of the falsely trialed, knowing full well what it means to be accused of a crime you did not commit. For that, Harry started vouching for those who deserved literal neck-saving with just his testimony, which was still invaluable to the wizarding community no matter how judged he was.

News flash; it nearly led everyone to insanity, bar him.

And Harry did not resent how everyone sought to criticise him in the earliest chance. To him, the outrage was understandable, for it was a hard ride after the second war. Adapting to the new air of finality and loss had almost killed people on its own accord. Families began to cling to one another, leaving behind prejudice because it just really no longer had a place amidst all the grief everyone had been feeling.

The grief of a brother, of a lover— all simply trying to recover.

But when it came to revenge, everyone saw red. None cared whether those in bars truly deserved so or were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. The justice system was erratic even after the disposal of Voldemort’s direct hands, and everyone kept inserting their highly unwanted opinions in matters that did not concern them.

Until a fair and just Minister took over, and Harry sighed the biggest sigh of relief.

“Do I need to monitor you there to make sure you won’t do something stupid?” Kingsley inquiried, his nonchalant voice thick with veiled concern, and Harry was not even slightly offended from that question because he himself waited this long to make sure he gives an honest answer.

“Now, you don’t.”

•|∆

His footsteps in that long, narrow path seemed as normal as a morning stroll in a Quidditch field on a matchless day; silent and still, and lacking the fresh air breeze that his Hogwarts pertained. The silence was deluding him to peace, but he knew better. Still, his cautious saunter didn't feel like last time when it was full of adrenaline and fear. His feet were just walking to the direction he so vividly remembers, and his memories didn’t obstruct his movement despite his previous trepidation of the idea per se.

Yet, all it took was a door.

The moment his hand opened its knob, his memories deadpan stopped him. The encompassing silence evaporated, and the voices he had once heard, exclusively in this room, returned. In every whisper, he heard a call for reminiscence. Between the muffle of gathered voices, he heard the events that started a never-ending cycle of grief.

Events that led to a fully fledged war between him and his greatest nemesis— himself.

Harry’s eyes roamed the room once more, his senses trying to grasp every inch of the surrounding space with a clenching heart. It seemed calmer this time, surely for being less eventful, and his eyes eventually ventured to the one thing he came for.

The triggering veil stood tall and broad in the middle of the high archway. Harry felt it was even more intimidating than the first time he had seen it, even if it now seemed shorter in close sight. It exuded a sense of grandeur, and still lurked in the shadows to seem impressionable. For a moment, all what Harry felt was the magnetic pull of that veil, asking him once more to enter it, to touch it like a forbidden fruit ready to end him. Harry vividly remembered that seductive tug when he once wanted nothing but to fulfill its enigmatic wish. Now, Harry knew the real deal, no matter how immensely difficult it was to truly believe it.

His time hadn’t come yet, and Harry begrudgingly accepted that.

Yet, Harry still leaned closer to touch the stone surrounding the veil. _How fascinating_ , thought a traitorous unbiased part of his mind, _to be this close to death and choose it if you so will._ The idea itself was just as entrancing as it was terrifying, for not a single death method ever showed you a door to the other world, just a thin sheet away from what your mind, heart, and soul truly desire.

He gazed to the depth of the apparent nothingness in front of him, intently wondering how many really lied beyond that veil. Was Sirius there alone? Trapped within an aisle that only led the fallen from the veil there? Imprisoned between the lines of his own death scene? Or could Harry allow, for once, a beam of light to colour his mind whilst he envisioned how life is treating Sirius now; him with James and Lily, just like he had last seen them all together. Were they able to converse and jest? Were Remus and Tonks there, too? Did Fred already join them?

Could they all see him?

Once again, it was just like visiting his parents’ graveyard back in Godric’s Hollow, yet the intensity of the experience increased twofold. Here, he could pretend that everyone he lost was an inch away, listening to every word he wishes to say and giving him the undivided attention he ached for. And that alone left Harry feeling alive from the inside.

Years and years had Harry felt dead from the inside, grief eating away his innards and leaving him unmoving past the moment when he felt everything was taken from him, when the one person that mattered to him most breathed no more. He thought life would only keep rewinding that forsaken moment, but it didn’t. Life got worse, and he lost even more, but sometimes it got better, and sometimes he didn’t feel like a broken record of unwanted memories.

At these times it got better, a part of Harry truly believed that he can be loved, even though the bigger part of him denied the possibility of being loved again the way his Sirius did in the unadulterated way solely made by parents only, no matter how much doting he has been used to getting from the Weasley clan.

It just wasn’t the same, and he knew it wouldn’t have been the same even with his parents if they had been alive.

Harry had no clue where that notion stemmed from, but he always thought that his parents would have been so loving to the point where he would want no more from life. That thought comforted him in his darkest nights below the stairs when he had no company but his colourful imagination. His visions included gifts as enormous as Dudley's birthday mountains and happy eyes smiling down at him after a heart-warming fit of laughter because he was the reason these genuine smiles were elicited. Simply everything he had envisioned in the dead of these nights was truly comforting, but nothing ever topped the sense of utter peace he felt when he thought of a cold winter night, warmed from the outside by a roaring fire, and warmed from the inside by two set of arms huddling him close in their embrace.

And Harry only felt that warmth in his Godfather’s brief, one-armed embrace.

However, what makes Harry think that his relationship with Sirius differed from what he would have had with his parents was the golden component Harry never envisioned nor realised he needed; Sirius’s ability to ground him to who he truly was, and keep his head in check. Now knowing that he won't find it in anyone else, Harry clung to that.

Slowly, very slowly, he sat down, and as he did so he felt more alive, and more aware of the looming presence behind him than ever before. He gently rested his back against the wide stone holding up the fluttering veil, and just sat back-to-back to it— a gesture of sheer companionship and goodwill— just mere inches away from a fate he still keenly awaited.

“I— I realised one day that I never hugged you,” Harry began abruptly, vowing he would only address the one he sought the Department of Mysteries for, separating the jumble of words he wished to address everyone else with. “I never got the chance to be wrapped in your full embrace. For years I had imagined it, Sirius. I imagined a warm hug from my parents that could glue me from inside, but I knew I mustn’t keep dwelling on that because I’ll never really know. But then you came into my life, and without realising it, your sole presence radiated the warmth of that hug I desperately ached for. The closest we’d gotten was your one-sided hug back when I was leaving Grimmauld after Christmas, but I know that my heart feels the whole extent of it, even if my hands didn’t.”

Harry looked down at the back of his hands, wondering how many lost touches these hands could have preserved if only they had the chance. Still gazing intently, Harry’s eyes drifted to the scar he had on his hand; a reminder of cruelty he vowed to never get rid of in order to remember the many horrors he had endured.

I MUST NOT TELL LIES

“Funny, I talk about warmth when I never even showed you this,” Harry said shortly. “Even if I wanted to, desperately, but I thought I should contain my anger and store it inside like I always did. Those moments when I thought that **no** , I don’t have to do everything alone when you existed in my life, I kept on thinking about your safety instead. Thought of how I’ll endanger you by contacting you just to vent out.”

He let out a small gesticulation of defeat, remembering just how idiotically noble his old self was. “I was so desperate to have you in my life that it seemed stupid in comparison if the other choice was not having you at all, you know?”

“ _I was so desperate_ ,” Harry wistfully repeated, as if remembering a previous mishap that could have saved so much. “I clung to the _idea_ of you more than I did on _you_ yourself. I wish I had ranted to you, told you more of how I felt, knew more about you and dad, asked you for advice— girl advice,” he chuckled slightly, remembering an odd moment when all his troubles were directed to a crush he had.

“I just wish I knew when our time was about to get cut, Sirius. It might have eased the hit of it all. I might have cherished you better, for I’m sorry I didn’t.”

He leaned his head back against the archway, willing his thoughts to form some sort of coherence in order to get it all out this time. This was his chance to say it all out loud, voice it all to the void, simply content from the closure.

“Sometimes, I feel like a child; wishful for a passing star to deliver my hellos to you. But some days are harder...” he croaked, feeling these other days in his bones, urging him to mention their existence mercilessly. “Some days I could do nothing but feel how fraying my bones have become when I wasn’t even twenty. They made me feel how much of a grown up I am, and wish beyond anything that I remained the child hiding in the cupboard once more, just to escape these traitorous days goading me into joining you all. It’s just—” he stopped, biting his lower lip and subconsciously hearing the fallacious assuring voice that his mind supplied.

_No judgement, Harry. None now._

“Being so close that time from death; feeling you, and Mum, Dad and Remus there, it made me perceive death for what it really is. I no longer shy away from it as if it is some sort of unnatural cause. I understand what you told me about it being quicker and easier than falling asleep, and for a long time I would have given anything to just feel its serene greeting once more. A greeting of an old.. friend.” Harry finished, a faraway look in his eyes, understanding the irony of it all and smiling.

“But.. I don’t feel like this anymore,” he continued, looking up to the wavering veil and directly addressing its greys. “I no longer want to die, even if sometimes I don’t want to live, too. I’m in a veil of my own; fluttering in its in-between.”

The waves of the veil began to move slower, as if in deep consideration— or maybe ultimate mockery, Harry could not tell— and he began to truly wish that Sirius was there to hear his outspoken thoughts.

“I sometimes feel like ever since the war had ended, everything started to settle down and peace started to reign,” Harry said, nervously adjusting his glasses back in place. “Everyone needed some time to grieve and get a hold on their lives once more. But I completely detached from it all. I barely even remember what a rush of adrenaline feels like. I steered away from any stressful jobs, even if it was my dream one day to become an Auror. But I just couldn’t anymore, you know? I just wanted to feel untroubled, even if for a little while, but I got so used to this calmness that I don't know how to react when I’m asked to be The Boy Who Saves again. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I would leave the world ablaze but... I just can’t. _I just can’t,_ Sirius. I’ve had enough—”

Suddenly, he wasn’t crouching against the veil anymore, but was transported to his old headmaster’s office where he had once expressed his grief through these same words while wrecking havoc. In effortless practice, he completed, “I have seen enough. I wanted it to end. I wanted everything to end. Or maybe I just wanted myself to end.”

He stopped, and a moment later, he voiced his same words of defeat, this time with resignation instead of rage. “I just didn’t want to fight anymore.”

Harry didn’t come with the intention of crying. At this point, it was pointless. All of it was pointless, for what would crying or even talking matter in his situation? They wouldn’t bring anyone back, even if his tears weighted a whole ocean or his words the seven skies. It just wouldn’t matter.

But the tear that dropped from his eye didn’t care, and it only invited its companions with the broken words Harry reconvened with.

“ _I miss you_. I miss everything about you so much that I can’t bear the weight of it sometimes. I’m a lost soul without you by my side, Sirius. You have the people I love with you, and I still miss no one else like I miss you. I miss your voice, your fire talks, your recklessness that used to frustrate me beyond imagination, your way of saying my name and... and simply you, Sirius. _I miss the way you lived.”_

“And there’s nothing left of you,” he confessed brokenly. “You’re slowly fading away more and it shatters my ruined heart. We rarely got any time together and it pains me that I took you for granted. It pains me so much that I wasn’t the godson you deserved. You lived a life of suffering and I never even eased it. I only added to it, for I was the reason you were locked up, and I was the reason you lived your last days in misery, and I was the reason that brought you to your doom, no matter how long it has been since I’ve accepted that it’s not on my hands alone. But fact still remains, Sirius. My presence affected you in reverse.”

Harry then stopped, and couldn't do more than take off his tear-stained glasses before properly sobbing in his own arms. With every shudder he felt the years of pain and misery he had lived. He felt the anguish he hadn't known how to let go of in his young age after losing the closest person to him. He felt everything vividly this time, no numbness nor denial, and Harry could swear a phantom of touch was there around his shoulders, keeping him together.

“Just.. just stay with me, because no one else should stay,” Harry stated with finality bordering on factuality after his cries had rescinded, brushing off the fallen warriors from his face, wishing he would never lose the sense of being the one in charge of letting them out. “No one else should endure staying with someone as broken beyond repair as I am no matter how much they say otherwise. I thought your death will teach me something, will give me some hope to go on in a way, but it is all fading away as well, and I am doing my absolute best to stop my desperate urge to just follow you wherever you are. For I am but a lonely saviour of a world without my own. I didn't wish for all this greatness thrust into my life; I just wanted happiness, and now I realise I only utterly had it when you were with me.”

Harry’s reeling mind began to think of the statement he had just uttered, and for the first time unprompted, his brain supplied his vision with a truly happy memory; one that his eyes starting to sparkle with genuine euphoria for remembering it.

“I’m happy for the Christmas we spent together, even if my head was so full of ruinous thoughts then. I miss seeing you sing, and singing alongside you until our throats would go sore. Remember that time when Remus had to curse us both to shut us up? All because it was past midnight and we just wouldn’t stop bellowing _Beat Back Those Bludgers, Boys, and Chuck That Quaffle Here!”_

Harry suddenly sat up, and with vivid attention towards the greys within the veil he held himself up straight, pretending to grab a non-existent microphone from the air and started his own enchanting very slowly while tapping four right foot-taps with a made-up rhythm.

**“We sit and watch in wonder,”**

_Two left taps, one right, one left, one right._

**“At each game the players play,”**

_One step right, two steps ahead._

**“And dream our team will reign supreme,”**

_One step backwards, and a slow spin in the air._

**“Thus we cannot help but say...”**

He stopped spinning, and as if calling for all the spirit within, Harry started absolutely screaming.

**“BEAT BACK THOSE BLUDGERS, BOYS, AND CHUCK THAT QUAFFLE HERE!”**

_DRUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM DUM_

**“NO TEAM CAN EVER BEST THE BEST OOOOOOOF**

**PUDDLEMEEEEERE!”**

And Harry laughed. He laughed _so hard_ that all his senses started laughing with him. The corners of his emerald eyes began to tear up just like they did the first time he sang with Sirius those lines, and the sound of his laughter began to reverberate through the walls of the once traumatising room. With every bout of happy sounds emanating from his lips, Harry felt, for the first time ever, a touch of relief coalesced within his normal grief.

Relief that he was able to have this memory to begin with, no matter how tainted it has become for being performed alone.

And the moment he started laughing, the veil that was suspiciously still during his grand performance began to flutter even more strenuously than Harry ever saw it do, and all he could do then was stop and look at it with true wonder, not his usual disdain from the memories it brought.

Because it felt as if he wasn’t the only one laughing.

**Author's Note:**

> feedback is my patronus! ◕ᴗ◕


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